


Living Memory

by bluestbluetoeverblue



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1940s, Alternate Timelines, M/M, PTSD, SHIELD, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 01:11:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16985289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluestbluetoeverblue/pseuds/bluestbluetoeverblue
Summary: In February of 1945, Steve Rogers crashes into the Arctic Ocean and survives. Less than a week later, Sergeant James Barnes is recovered from a Hydra compound with severe memory loss.





	1. Chapter 1

They find him six days after the war is ended. Steve sits in an empty bar trying his hardest to get drunk when he hears the news. He takes a shot every time the cold of the Arctic ice creeps up his spine, but his mind is as present as ever when he hears the click of heels on the wood floor. He turns to look up at Peggy, but her red lips are not smiling with the victory like everyone else’s. Her eyes are bright, worried. It occurs to him that maybe it hadn’t worked and the war in Europe is not really over. Something courses through him. Panic? Gratitude? Peggy is composed as ever, but she stands too still for too long in her pressed uniform, hesitant to deliver whatever news she carries.

“Steve,” she reaches a hand out to touch his arm. “He’s alive.”

Every moment after is a blur until Steve is standing in a Belgian hospital listening to Peggy argue with three uniformed officers. Steve walks past them and through the double doors. He sweeps the room, eyes easily finding the cot, curtained off and set aside from the rest. He closes the distance to the foot of the bed in a second.

“Bucky,” he whispers, his voice rough.

His hair is a little longer and his face blank, but Steve knows those eyes. He would recognize that blue in the deepest trench, at the end of the world. He rakes his own eyes over Bucky, restraining from the instinct to drop to his knees. Even during the worst winter back home when neither of them could find work, Bucky had never been so thin. Ribs peeks out from layers of bandages. His feet stick out from the wool blanket and are wrapped completely in gauze. Then there is the arm. It gleams in the bright lights of the hospital ward, pure metal from the shoulder down. Something hard forms in Steve’s stomach as he searches Bucky’s face.

He can hear Peggy and a handful of doctors and officers arrive behind him, but they fall silent and feel far away from Steve. He watches Bucky’s eyes meet his.

“I know you.” The words are jagged and sound unnatural coming from such a characteristically smooth mouth.

“Buck, it’s me. It’s Steve.”

“Steve…” Bucky murmurs the word like a puzzle. His eyes drop to the blanket on his lap as he tries to work something out.

“Steve,” Peggy says in a soft voice, a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Sergeant Barnes has been experiencing some memory loss. It appears to be the result of extensive torture.”

Steve feels crazed, like the victim of an elaborate joke. Bucky, the loss he has yet to mourn, alive again only to have no idea who he is. After everything they have been through, how can they be strangers? He is alive, Steve remembers, and that, at least, is something to cling to.

***

“We were friends then,” Bucky says, voice still rough. He sits up in his cot, facing where Steve has taken up watch in a chair beside the bed.

“For as long as I can remember,” Steve replies. “You’ve been helping me out of fights our whole lives.” His voice is wistful, and he can’t help but hope that at any moment Bucky will return to himself and make a bad joke. Instead, he stares blankly, clearly trying to recall something. “Is there anything you do remember?” Steve asks.

“They say I was a soldier,” Bucky says, looking at a group of nurses across the ward. “That seems right. I feel like a soldier. And…” he glances at Steve with an unsure face, “something about you is familiar, like we met a long time ago. The rest is just cold.”

After a few weeks, the doctors decide that there isn’t anything to do but wait and see what happens. They warn Bucky that he may never fully remember, but he just nods and stares at the distance. The truth is that none of them are sure exactly what had been done to Bucky in that Hydra bunker. Before they leave, Steve catches Peggy alone in the hallway. He knows that they have been holding her there, that she has more important business to attend to. This is goodbye, for now, and Steve is filled with a sudden dread of leaving that small European hospital and Agent Carter.

“This is good,” she says, reading his mind like always. “It will be good for him to go home, I’m sure of it.”

“I hope you’re right,” Steve says. He stares at the perfect roll of her chestnut hair and for a second feels like he is back at Camp Leigh. It seems like a lifetime ago. “Peg...I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“That’s never stopped you before, Captain.” She takes his hand with a smile that he can’t help but return.

“Where will you go?”

“They’re sending me back home for now. After that, I am not entirely sure. Maybe the States, though.”

“We’d be lucky to have you.”

She smiles and looks at him for a long moment.

“Take care of yourself, Steve,” she says, kissing his cheek.

***

It is strange to be back in Brooklyn. The neighborhood is the same as when Steve left, but everything else is irrevocably different. He walks up familiar front steps, jams the key in at just the right angle, and yanks the door open. The apartment is untouched, a stack of envelopes on the kitchen counter, a few clothes strewn across the card table. Steve steps inside and sets his duffle on the ground. Bucky steps in behind him and does the same, appraising the space without comment. It had been too much to hope that being home might trigger something.

“Home sweet home,” Steve says without inflection. He feels uncomfortable and is unsure what to do in the face of Bucky’s continued silence, so he walks over to the stove and fills the kettle with water. The motions feel familiar, comforting. Isn’t that what his mother always did when he was sick or upset, brew a pot of tea? Steve thinks for a moment and can almost feel the burn of the first sip after she died, when Bucky had barged in days after the funeral, pulled him out of bed, and made him a mug full. Steve’s chest aches.

“It was just me after you left for the war, so you can have the bed,” he says, keeping his tone even. “I don’t mind the couch.” He gestures to the ratty blue sofa that fills most of the other half of the main living space. Bucky nods and wanders into the bedroom. Steve sets the kettle to heat on the stove and grabs the letters off the counter. He runs a thumb over the worn pencilled address on the front of the top one and takes a deep breath before tucking them into his duffle bag and going to fix the tea.

The Army had been more than willing to cover living expenses for a while, even after Steve insisted that he is done fighting. It is the least they can do for their hero. Given how cheap their old apartment is, the government stipend is going to last quite a while, and Steve had figured that Bucky would be better off going home to somewhere he had known before. On better days, Bucky is willing to venture into the city and see the place he used to know so well. It is always uncomfortable when someone from the neighborhood recognizes him. Everyone is happy to see a boy who had made it home, but the troublemaking Barnes kid they had once known has no idea who they are. Most of the time, it is just the two of them in the apartment, trying to make sense of the new order. Bucky asks questions now and then but mostly just sits passively. In bed, at the table, on the couch. It doesn’t matter where, he can sit for hours and stare at nothing. It is unnerving, but Steve keeps to the routine. The only times Bucky seems present are when Steve makes meals and tries to keep up a conversation at the table. It is like eating with a ghost. After a while, Steve decides that talking about the past is unlikely to make things any worse, so that’s what he does. He spends most of the day talking about things Bucky can’t remember. He talks about about the old meat market down the street that had been so good before it went out of business, about how Bucky had managed to chip every plate they owned back in the day, about the dancehalls, about anything he can think of.

“A wedding announcement came in the mail from Dum-Dum today,” Steve says over sandwiches one day. Bucky looks at him and listens like always. “He was part of our team during the war. He’s had some troubles with marriage in the past and loves to talk about his relationships whenever anyone bothers to listen. He’s a loudmouth, really, even worse than you were. I hope this one sticks, though. He deserves to be happy.”

Steve watches Bucky nod and take another bite, left arm wiring quietly. Steve would give anything to know what is going on in his mind, to get more than a few words out of him. The arm, the stillness, the confusion Steve can take. But nothing is more unsettling than a Bucky with nothing to say.

For a moment, Steve considers it, but he brushes the thought away again. How can he tell him now, how could he explain what they were? It would be too easy to tell Bucky every detail, every remembered moment that has run through his mind the last few months as he has been wishing for things to get better. Instead, Steve takes a breath and suggests that they walk to the market tomorrow.

***

It is barely six in the morning when the pounding begins. It wakes Steve, who sits up on the couch to find the source. Still half-asleep, he starts towards the front door before noticing Bucky standing frozen in the doorway to the bedroom, gripping a knife. Steve takes in his wild, shadowed eyes. Bucky watches him, loosens his stance.

Steve opens the door to find a young dark-haired woman standing on the front step. Her eyes sweep over him in the bright morning light, finally landing on his face.

“Steve?” she asks, her brow crinkling.

“Rebecca?” he returns. It takes a second for the panic to set in.

“Is it true? Where is he?” Before Steve can consider how to respond, Rebecca has pushed past him into the apartment. Steve turns after her, but she stops cold upon finding Bucky standing in the kitchen in gray sweatpants with an metal arm.

“James,” she says under her breath before grabbing him into a hug. He does not resist the embrace but looks to Steve with wild confusion over her shoulder.

“Rebecca, what are you doing here?” Steve asks as she steps back to look at her brother.

“What do you think I’m doing here?” she bites. “No one bothered to let me know that you were safe, so I had to hear it from some kid at the butcher?” She glares at Bucky, who only seems to look more lost by the second. His jaw clenched, he backs up to sit on the couch.

“Rebecca,” Steve says, nervousness evident in his voice. “I’m sorry that we haven’t talked to you. It was thoughtless, but you don’t understand the whole situation.”

“Just because I don’t approve of the life you choose to live doesn’t mean I wasn’t worried about you the whole time you were fighting in that damn war.” Her tone wavers towards a yell. Bucky closes his eyes, and Steve grabs her by the arm.

“Rebecca, listen to me. A lot of things happened while we were over there. Bucky was...injured. He’s had some memory loss. I’m not sure he knows who you are.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?” She turns back to face Bucky. “James, it’s me. You’ve known me your whole life.”

“His memory isn’t right,” Steve says again.

“This is all your fault,” Rebecca spits at him. They both fall silent as Bucky stands from the couch, towering over his sister, eyes empty.

“I don’t remember you,” he says flatly before walking to the bedroom and closing the door.

He stays behind that door for hours after Rebecca leaves. Unsure of what to do, Steve decides not to push him anymore and goes about his morning. He is reading the paper that afternoon when Bucky emerges dressed in a bulky coat and his old issued boots. He stands in the living room awkwardly for a moment as Steve stares up at him in curiosity from the couch.

“I have to leave,” Bucky says in a solid voice.

“What? Buck, the best way to remember is to be here where you belong. Where would you even go?”

“It doesn’t matter. I can’t be here anymore.”

Steve tosses the paper to the floor and stands.

“Why are you doing this?”

“I can’t be the person you want me to be. I don’t even know who that person is,” Bucky yells. It is the most emotion Steve has heard in his voice since they have been home. For a moment, it fills Steve with naive hope as he remembers every fight they have ever had, standing just like this in the apartment or in an alleyway or on the fire escape, yelling until they were both hoarse.

“Bucky—”

“Who the _hell_ is Bucky?”

The words push Steve back on his feet, take the breath out of his lungs. He is speechless, frozen just long enough for Bucky to mutter an apology and disappear through the door. Steve stands in the apartment they have shared for so long without a single clue as to what to do next.


	2. Chapter 2

The city is louder than before. The sounds of traffic and banging dumpsters that were once a hallmark of home surround Steve as he walks through the city. He has finally invested in street clothes that fit him, and he has taken to wearing a baseball cap almost everywhere he goes. In other parts of the city, there are always a few people who recognize him from the pulp magazines. He sees them in store fronts occasionally, his bright red and blue popping next to the Commando’s uniforms. Steve tries not to notice them.

He finds the small diner easily enough. A bell chimes as he walks inside out of the crisp autumn morning. The building is mostly empty, and Steve catches sight of a red-lipped smile at a corner booth almost immediately. Peggy stands to give him a quick embrace. Steve breathes in her perfume and wishes they could stand there for longer, that she would wrap her arms around his shoulders. He hasn’t realized how lonely the last few months have been, holed up in an empty apartment. They slide into either side of the booth, and Peggy just smiles at him for a moment.

“It’s good to see you, Steve.”

“You too, Pegs,” Steve says. “It could have been sooner if you’d told me you were in New York.”

“I’ve only been here a few months, and I’ve been trying to readjust to being just an SSR agent again.” Steve tilts his head, questioning. “It turns out that my service during the war did not earn me any additional responsibility here.”

“They’re crazy if they don’t let you lead. We wouldn’t have taken close to as many Hydra bases as we did without you strategizing it all.”

A waitress with blonde hair and a faded seafoam uniform approaches their table.

“Morning, Peg,” she says in a bubbly voice, whipping a pad of paper out of her uniform pocket. “The usual?”

“Yes, Angie, thank you.”

“And for your friend?” the waitress asks, turning to Steve. She glances back at Peggy, a curious smile playing on her lips.

“Just coffee, please,” Steve says. Angie hovers over him for a second before grinning at Peggy.

“Coming right up,” she says, hurrying to the table being occupied at the opposite end of the diner.

“Come here a lot?” Steve asks. Peggy smooths her blue suit jacket.

“The food is rather wretched,” she says with a small smile. “But the atmosphere I quite enjoy.” Steve can’t help but grin. Peggy Carter, who never has a hair out of place, blushing as she shakes her head. The moment is stolen, poisoned by the jealous pit in Steve’s stomach. He grimaces and looks at the table. Before he can hide the expression, Peggy’s brow furrows with worry.

“What happened?” she asks. Steve runs his hand over a sugar packet that is abandoned on the table top.

“He left,” he says in a heavy voice. “I couldn’t help him, so he left. And now I have no idea where he is.”

“I’m sorry, darling,” Peggy replies. “But maybe space is the best thing for both of you. This could be good in the long run.”

Steve nods, though he doesn't believe it. Peggy reaches across the table and rests a warm hand on his. For the first time in months, Steve doesn’t feel alone.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asks. “I can’t just sit and wait for him to come home. I can’t look for him. I can barely breathe it’s so strange to be in that apartment again.”

Angie returns and sets two steaming mugs on the formica table. She smiles softly in response to their thanks and leaves them to their conversation, which Steve is thankful for.

“Well,” Peggy stirs her drink thoughtfully, “that is what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m working on a new project, and I was hoping that you might help.”

“I thought the SSR—”

“I’m leaving the SSR. We might work with them, but I’m starting my own agency. Something new that can escape the bureaucracy and protect more people.”

“And you want me to help?”

“Help me and Howard, yes. And I know that you don’t like him,” she adds as Steve opens his mouth to protest, “but he has the capital and the technology. We need him.”

“What sort of agency?” Steve asks with a bit of hesitance.

“It’s called the Strategic Homeland Intervention something. We’re still working out the full name, but it’s going to be called SHIELD.”

“Shield? Really?” Steve feels a little childish and very much like a false idol.

“Captain America was bigger than you or any of us. He was a symbol. He meant something. Please, Steve. Come work with us. Help us do some good.”

***

Steve never expected to be back at Camp Leigh, but here he is watching a group of recruits jogging around the perimeter. He wonders whether they know exactly what they are training for. Peggy had said that she wanted to be more than covert. A few of the recruits pause to watch him until their trainer starts barking at them. As they continue their route, Steve spots Peggy across the way and goes to meet her. She gives him a tour of the repurposed base, which no longer belongs to the Army, evidently. They conclude in the main building, where Howard is busy yelling at a number of wide-eyed lab assistants.

“Steve,” he calls, voice full of charm as he gestures for the assistants to leave. “So glad Peg got you on board.”

Something blue catches Steve’s eye, and he notices his old uniform lying on a table amongst a pile of sketches and fabric swatches.

“Don’t worry,” Peggy says when she catches him eyeing it. “I’ve convinced Howard that something more subdued would be better for a new tactical role.”

For the first few weeks, Steve feels less useful than a piece of furniture. Howard makes it clear that his suggestions are not welcome in the lab, and Peggy rushes around doing a million things at once, most of which Steve doesn’t have the experience to have an opinion on. Most of the time, he walks the camp, observing the birth of an agency and wondering if it will last two years. Sometimes a recruit will wander over, looking around in the hopes that a superior isn’t watching, and ask Steve a question. He indulges them and asks questions of his own. Most of them are bright-eyed and hopeful to make a difference. Some have a long record of service in domestic departments, though a few were too young to enlist during the war.

By the time the first group is through with training, Peggy has used Howard’s contacts in D.C. to turn the Strategic Homeland Intervention and Enforcement Division into a full fledged organization that only a handful of people know about. The first mission Peggy sends him on is strictly surveillance, but it is mostly an errand to test the least experienced agents and get them accustomed to field work. He leaves for Europe in a brand new suit, this one black and more focused on gear than stage presence.

The mission goes smoothly, as do most of the ones that follow. Steve watches the junior agents grow into their positions and learn to function as a team. He can’t help but look for the Commandos in them. Really, he can’t stop seeing Bucky. His stubbornness in Jackson, his mouth in Ammons, his skill with a rifle in Holden. He holds them at a distance, which is easy given that they mostly treat him with dutiful respect or disinterest, but nothing more. Still, the first time one of them doesn’t make it back from the field, Steve doesn’t sleep for weeks.

“Is it true that they gave you a Medal of Valor, sir?” asks one of the agents during a plane ride back from Greece. She’s much younger than Steve was when they finally let him enlist. He nods.

“And then they sent you here?”

“Director Carter recruited me just like you.” She thinks about this for a moment, brown eyes thoughtful.

“Can I ask why you got back into this after the war?” Steve watches her, but there isn’t a hint of ill intention, only curiosity. Wondering what her future holds on the path she has started, Steve figures. “My father served in the Great War, my mother as a nurse. They both begged my brothers not to enlist.”

“Do they know about this?” Steve asks. She raises her eyebrows.

“What would you tell them if you were in my position?” The question brings Sarah to mind, and Steve cannot begin to imagine explaining to his mother what he did to get into this situation. “They think I work in Toledo at the phone company. They worry about me being alone in a strange city.” She smiles in a grim way, a way Steve understands more than she realizes.

“I came to SHIELD as a favor, really,” he says after a beat. “But if I’m being honest with myself, there was never a fight I was willing to turn down.”

***

The longer Steve spends back in uniform, the more unnatural it feels to be home. He wanders around an empty apartment waiting for new assignments. The breaks between them become shorter, and it almost feels like it used to be, living in the field, never being too far from the front lines. This is surveillance, mostly, instead of taking Hydra bases, but they see action often enough. Steve takes a knife to the shoulder that reminds him of the one he pulled out of Bucky’s thigh during a firefight in France after dragging him over to Morita. He watches a bullet pierce through the neck of an agent he doesn’t know well, holds his hands uselessly over the gushing blood. His fingers are still stained red when he gets on the plane that night, the operation scrapped. It occurs to Steve that he has no idea why they were there, what purpose the agent had died for.

During the war, he was the one making the plans. He and Peggy were the strategists, in coordination with Phillips, with Bucky as his sounding board, his compass. Now he is a soldier again, but this time he isn’t sure why the orders are being handed down. When he gets back to Jersey, Steve goes to see Peggy in her office, to ask for more details about the operation.

“Steve, I didn’t even know that you were overseas. It isn’t my job to analyze the intel that prompts every assignment. And honestly, it isn’t yours either.”

The next time he gets a vague file, he goes to ask for more information before they head out. Instead of Peggy, however, he finds Howard in her office.

“Good morning, Captain.” Stark says from behind her desk, giving an embellished salute. “How can I help you?”

“What are you doing?” Steve asks.

“I am a partner in this organization, am I not? I have business outside of my lab, you know.”

“Where is Peggy?” Steve doesn’t have time for Howard’s snark today, nor his pompousness.

Howard does not give up much more of a fight, but before Steve leaves says, “If this is about that curiosity of yours, I promise that your security clearance isn’t high enough.”

Steve heads to the North part of the camp and enters a building he has never explored. He finds Peggy in a conference room on the second floor, just as Howard said he would. Steve stands in the hall and looks inside where Peggy is speaking with a large number of men in business attire. She glances towards him, shakes her head almost imperceptibly, and closes the door.

“I’m leaving,” Steve says when she exits the room an hour later, the other men dispersing.

“Where to?” she asks, flipping through the files in her arms as she walks down the hall. He keeps pace as her heels click on the tile.

“I’m leaving SHIELD.”

She stops and turns to look at him, reading glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. She studies his face for a long moment.

“You too, then? Everyone is leaving.” Now it is Steve’s turn to question her. She shrugs. “Angie moved out.”

“Pegs, I’m sorry.”

“She couldn’t handle the hours I have to put in as director,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s fine. Living together for too long would have been scandalous anyway. It’s hard enough to be taken seriously as a woman in this industry.”

She continues walking, and once they have made it outside, Steve is still trying to decide what to say.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she says.

“I can’t do this anymore, Peggy. I can’t be a mindless agent who just takes orders that you don’t even know about.”

Peggy stops on the edge of the path, glaring up at him. Her face is defensive, her body tense. The corners of her mouth curve downwards. A few agents who live on base jog past and turn to watch the two of them after reading the atmosphere.

“What are you going to do, Steve? You’re just like me. SHIELD is the only thing you have.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

“Fine,” she says, with a bitterness that Steve has never heard in her voice. She tenses her jaw and meets his eyes as if to say goodbye. For a moment, Steve tries to imagine the two of them, standing on this same ground, seeing each other as they did then, the first time they met. Steve, too small and too weak, watching her with awe. She was one of the most amazing people he had ever met. “Good luck, Steve,” she says and walks away.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve goes back to his apartment and can’t really remember the last time he was there given how often he had stayed in the barracks during the lulls between assignments. He stands in the the drafty kitchen and wishes he had somewhere else to be again. Without thinking much, he begins to pull everything out of the cabinets and take inventory. He moves on to the miniscule living room, which is basically empty anyways. Then to the bedroom, where he makes a pile on the bed, pulling everything out of the closet and bureau. He doesn’t have many possessions to speak of, not after spending most of his life too poor to buy fresh bread and the other part constantly on the move.

Steve surveys the collections and starts filling the two duffles he has, one a faded green stained with mud from the old days and one a black SHIELD issue. He packs his now unnecessary uniform and the handful of clothes that still fit him. Everything from before the serum goes. He pauses at the other half of the closet. Bucky hadn’t bothered taking most of his clothes. Steve thumbs through them and grabs an old jacket and a few shirts with the excuse that they might actually fit him. He grabs the box full of old sketchbooks, a few paperbacks that are piled beside the bed, his mother’s rosary, the charcoal Bucky somehow got him for Christmas one year. He thinks about leaving the sheets and blanket on the bed, but his upbringing wins over in the end as he strips it and stuffs them into the bigger bag. He uses the bundle to protect the few things he takes from the kitchen. With one last thought, he removes the stack of letters from the kitchen drawer and tucks them into the bag, strictly deciding not to read them.

The SHIELD pay had always seemed like too much, which was probably why he didn’t end up using much of it. Everything he had set aside is helpful now. It covers him for a while in a new place in a different neighborhood. Steve puts the key in for the first time and almost breaks the door he pushes so hard out of habit. It gives out under his strength and reveals a mostly furnished apartment. It is still small, but the thermostat works. He sits on the chair in the living room and stares out the large uncurtained window. This is good, he thinks.

That night he dreams of the train, going through the motions knowing what is about to happen but unable to break the script. Bucky’s hand grips his, but neither can hold on. He slips out of Steve’s grasp, disappearing into white. Steve watches him fall, but then the ice rises up and envelops him until he wakes up screaming in an unfamiliar room. The nightmares have always been there, but they grow more intense over time. At least once a week he dreams of falling or watching Bucky fall into an endless expanse of icy nothing. Steve always knows what is coming but can never escape his fate. If it isn’t the ice, he is stuck in a trench with a junior agent bleeding out under his hands or in a drift trying to drag Bucky’s body and leaving a trail of blood in the snow.

One night, after waking up in a sweat, Steve cannot fall back asleep. It was a new scene this time: his mother, eyes dry and puffy, whispering prayers as she lies on the ground in the woods. Steve can hear gunfire in the distance. He tries to help her, but his hands are too cold to move. Bright white snowflakes begin to fall and cover her frail body. Just as Steve digs her out of the snow, she disappears.

He sits up in bed and switches on the lamp. His breathing ragged, he sits still and waits for his heartbeat to regulate. Sometimes he still wakes up expecting the sharp pain in his lungs to have woken him, but this heaviness in his chest is different. Steve grabs an old notebook, flips to a blank page, and starts to sketch. He hates how difficult it is to remember the lines of her face, but a few minutes later the page is covered with Sarah’s likeness. He runs a hand over it, smudging the graphite a little. It has been so long since he has drawn anything. He considers flipping through the rest of the pages, but he knows they mostly are just Bucky. His jawline, his eyes, his hair as he sat on the fire escape first thing in the morning. Another is filled with images of him in the field, drawn by firelight or in the haze of morning watches.

After Steve picks up a pencil again, the dreams come less frequently. They happen, but he sleeps more nights than not. He buys a new sketchbook, one he could have never have afforded before, and takes it to the park to break it in. He sits for hours and draws everything he sees. It feels good to create something again and to be out in the world like a normal person. He stops for lunch at the L&L Automat on the way home one afternoon and is sketching the napkin dispenser when a familiar voice approaches.

“Angie,” Steve says in surprise, not having realized where he was or that Angie had gone back to waitressing.

“Hi, Steve,” she says with a smile, taking out her notepad for his order. Steve gives it a little uncomfortably, not sure what would be the right thing to say. Angie pours his coffee and hesitates, shifting her weight beside the table. “How is she?” she asks with a hint of caution.

“I wouldn’t know,” Steve says. She tilts her head, eyebrows raised. “I retired.”

“Oh,” Angie says with a knowing smile. She starts to turn away, but Steve stops her.

“What is it?”

“You just don’t seem like the retirement type,” she replies in that ever-bubbly voice. “I’ll have that corned beef for you in just a minute.”

***

Steve is reading an old book of poems that Bucky always loved in the park. The pages are well-worn, with the corners turned down on his favorites. Steve reads those ones twice. The wind picks up, and it starts to rain. Steve slips the book in his coat pocket and heads toward the bar up the street, hoping for a dry place to keep reading. The bar is mostly empty given the time of day, but he enters a few seconds after a young black man who stands a few inches taller than him. The man is ordering a drink as Steve sits a few spots down at the bar.

“Sure,” the bartender grumbles at the order before continuing to stand and read his newspaper. Steve clenches his jaw and orders two whiskeys. The bartender has them poured and set on the bar in front of Steve in a minute. He moves over and slides one glass to the other man, who eyes him for a second before accepting. The bartender grunts and disappears into the back room.

“Thanks,” the kid says, taking a drink. “You didn’t have to do that. I don’t know why I expected any better here.” He shakes his head and raps his knuckles on the bar.

“New to the city?” Steve asks.

“A friend used to live here. Doesn’t anymore, but always said I should visit so…” He shrugs and takes another drink. He’s younger than Steve but has a gravity to him.

“Well, now you’ve got one friend at least. I’m Steve.” He sticks out his hand, which the man shakes with grin.

“I know who you are, sir. Nick Fury.”

“You military?” Steve asks.

“Army like you,” Nick replies easily. “I wasn’t on the front lines, but it changed me.”

“Are you out?” Steve asks, picking his glass up and taking a swallow of the whiskey.

“Are you?” Nick counters, and Steve laughs.

They fall into silence for a moment, a comfortable one. Steve hasn’t really spoken to anyone one on one like this in months. He normally hates being recognized, but this is better.

“So are you here for good or just short term?” Steve asks.

“Not sure yet. Right now I’m just taking it all in, I guess.”

“I don’t have many recommendations, but I always wanted to see the Statue.”

“Aren’t you from here?” Nick asks.

“Born and raised in Brooklyn, but I’ve never been to the island and really seen it, you know?”

“Sure,” Nick nods. After a second he laughs. “I’m just imagining getting off a ferry full of tourists to sightsee with Captain America.”

Steve feels so disconnected from that image that he can’t help but laugh himself.

***

A cold wind seeps through the window no matter how many flannel shirts are stuffed in the crevices of the pane. Steve shivers as he buttons a shirt with shaking hands. The veins are flush against his nearly translucent skin, tinting his hands a sickly blue. A door slams a room away.

“You awake?” calls Bucky’s voice. Steve smiles despite himself and pulls on an old wool sweater that hangs on his frame. If he was asleep, he certainly wouldn’t be anymore. Bucky appears in the doorway in black slacks and a sweat-soaked shirt, his hair mussed all over the place. He’s grinning in that devilish way of his. “Hey, doll.” Steve shakes his head and steps forward, one hand on Bucky’s chest as he is pulled towards him.

Steve’s eyes open to darkness. For a wild moment, the dream feels like a memory from yesterday and not years ago. But then he feels the warm air on his face, is aware of how much space his body occupies. He stares up at the ceiling and can still feel Bucky’s lips on his neck. The feeling is swept away with a flock of goosebumps and a siren somewhere outside the window. After the sun has risen, Steve makes the bed and goes into the kitchen to heat a pot of water. He spreads the supplies across the table, sits with a clean sheet of paper, and begins painting.

***

Steve balances a load of groceries in one hand while pulling the keys out of his pocket, nearly losing a sack of oranges as he exits the stairwell. He is thinking about lunch and how nice it would feel to open the windows and read this afternoon. Until he rounds the corner to his front door and finds the last thing he was expecting. She stands tall in deep blue heels the same color of her pantsuit. Steve stands frozen for a moment, arms full of groceries, before opening the door and letting her in.

“I’m sorry to show up unannounced,” Peggy says as he sets the bags on the kitchen counter and turns to face her. She looks unnatural in the space, holding her hands together as if in worry when her demeanor exudes anything but. “But this isn’t something that can be discussed over the phone.”

Steve leans back against the counter and waits for her to go on. He always expected SHIELD to knock on his door one day, though he hadn’t thought it would be Peggy herself. She sets her mouth in a hard line in response to his silence and pulls a thick brown folder out of her bag. She sets the file on the counter between them. The front shows nothing but some Russian that Steve cannot read.

“For a while now, we have been tracking power struggles across the world. Major leaders, allies and enemies, trying to establish a stronger intelligence hold now that we know what world conflicts look like. Over time, a pattern began to emerge. The assassinations seemed unconnected at first, but they were initially all connected to Hydra, some so tangentially that we had no record of the relationships. They have moved further out into global affairs now.”

“Are you asking me to take a mission?” Steve asks.

“I’m here as a courtesy, Steve, and nothing more. The assassinations are all being perpetrated by one man. He is not connected to anyone or anything. He’s a ghost. The most we can find on him are rumors, whispers really.”

“And what do they say?”

“Nothing of substance. That he’s a lone wolf. Powerful despite it. That you never see him coming. They call him the Winter Soldier.” Steve runs a hand through his hair, glancing at the file. She has him hooked, of course. He would love to pour over the information and get his feet on the ground. But he left SHIELD for a reason, and Peggy clearly does not want him back. “There was never anything concrete, no leads to pursue,” she says, “until last week when one of our agents happened to be in the right place at the right time. We’ve only just put together that it’s him.”

She pushes the file towards him. He eyes her, forehead creasing, before flipping it open. The top page of the report is a single image, blown up. It was taken in motion. Nearly every part of the image is blurred, but there is just enough focus on the side of the man in the corner as he turns away. It is a face Steve would know anywhere, a profile he has studied; countless sketches of it lay in boxes at the top of his closet.

“It can’t be,” he breathes. His eyes fly to Peggy. She looks pained for him, but her face is firm. “He can’t have done what you’re saying,” Steve says.

“It can only be him, Steve. The evidence is all there in the file. You can read over it, keep it if you want. I just needed to tell you before he is taken in.”

“ _Taken in?_ ” Steve’s voice is jagged and stops her as she turns towards the door. “This is Bucky we’re talking about. He’s a war hero. He’s saved my life more times than I can count, and he’s saved yours too.”

“This isn’t the same boy you lost on that train,” Peggy says without a second of hesitation. “He is toppling regimes. No one should have that much power.”

“Not unless they work for you,” Steve says. Peggy looks at him, face painted with dignified rage, before she opens the front door.

“I came here to tell you personally because we were friends. Sergeant Barnes has sealed his fate.”

The door closes with a click behind her, and the sound of her heels can be heard for a few seconds as she walks down the hallway before Steve is left to stare at the picture of Bucky in silence. He reads though the file standing there in his tiny kitchenette, newly purchased food still sitting on the counter. Then he reads through it again, start to finish. The evidence, if it is to be believed, is solid. Regardless of what got him there, Bucky is in trouble. And Steve has never been one to back down from an impossible fight.


	4. Chapter 4

“You sure you don’t want back up wherever it is you’re going?” Nick asks as he finishes off his drink and sets the empty glass on the table. They are in their usual back booth, early afternoon light streaming through the windows. Steve has a small bag beside him and plans to leave straight from the bar to the airport.

“Thanks, but this is something I have to take care of myself,” Steve says, shaking his head. Nick nods.

“You think you’ll ever really be out of it?”

“No,” Steve answers, admitting it to himself for the first time. No matter how many mornings he spends painting or reading poems, this is always what he will be. A soldier leaving for the next battle. Even without the stars and stripes, he will never be out.

Nick agrees to stop by the apartment once in a while to make sure it is undisturbed since Steve does not know how long he will be gone. He starts in Geneva, the spot of the first death. Time has passed, and there is not much to go on. He investigates the details anyway, rereading the file as if he doesn’t have it memorized. He traces the events across the continent, stopping in different locations to dig around and find nothing more than SHIELD did. There is a woman in Germany that Steve thinks may have seen something, but she only knows enough to whisper a warning through a chain-locked door. You won’t last long looking for the ghost, she says, and Steve moves on to the next city.

A pattern emerges that wasn’t as explicit in the file. It becomes tangible the more Steve learns about the people being taken out by the Soldier. They are scientists, high up in unknown organizations or hidden at the tops of world governments. Scientists and the political leaders that pay them. It isn’t until he has been in Europe for three months that Steve gets something more concrete. The incident was well documented in the press: an award-winning geneticist and his entire team were found murdered in the remains of a burned lab. What the papers didn’t report was Dr. Szabó’s position on his government’s payroll. Coincidentally, a number of government officials were killed within the same week. These deaths are no different from the others, besides being more publicly reported, except that one of Szabó’s team survived. He was at a conference in the States and arrived home to find the project smouldering. After a week of surveillance, Steve is waiting for him at home one night.

“You,” the man gasps when Steve steps into view, his face still covered in shadow. “Please, you’ve already destroyed it all.”

His hands shake as he backs towards the door. Steve steps forward, knowing that the man has no chance of outrunning him. The man’s eyes grow wider in surprise as he recognizes Steve. He clearly was not expecting a call from Captain America. The interrogation goes quickly, which Steve appreciates. He never enjoyed them in SHIELD or before. Bucky had been the one of them that got information from Hydra operatives. This man is a scientist and not as committed to his cause as he is his well being. He talks immediately.

“I trained with Zola,” he says in a pleading voice, and Steve never has to ask another question.  
“He was successful, but I only saw part of the process. I left the project before they found him. It’s a race to see who can figure it out first. But the Soldier, he’s killing us before we get the chance.”

Steve thinks about the number of bodies being left in Bucky’s wake, the number of people trying to replicate the serum. He tries to imagine the horror that would happen if they all managed to do it. If every major power could make their own super soldiers. The world might not survive the next global conflict. The information makes it easier to follow Bucky’s footsteps, knowing what to look for because he finally understands what Bucky has been tracking. Still, there are no traces of the Winter Soldier himself. Steve has to be proactive, then. No more chasing. He starts to look away from the trail, makes friends in the right cities, starts to hear rumors about strange experiments. He watches a scientist in Austria for nearly a month before realizing that her project has no intentions of expanding beyond vaccines.

He is thinking about leaving when a young woman approaches him outside the place he is staying. She is a former assistant to the scientist Steve was watching, fired from the project a few months before. He considered using the guise of some affiliation but ended up approaching her with the truth. Most of it, anyway. He said that he was looking for a friend who was working with secret experiments. She told him about the project, bitter about her termination but making it clear that nothing was being hidden. It was the nail in the coffin of his investigation. She emerges from an alcove on the street now, and Steve’s hand goes straight to the knife on his hip before he sees the anxiety in her eyes.

“I don’t care if you were involved,” Steve says firmly as they step into an alleyway to talk. “I just want to know what your boss was working on.”

“Vaccines, I swear.” She stands a few feet from him, watching every move he makes, shoulders hunched.

“What’s happened?” Steve asks. She looks at his eyes for a long second and takes a deep breath.

“After you, two men showed up and asked about the project. They said they were with the government and threatened to arrest me if I didn’t tell them everything. I thought they were going to anyway, but they just left. Now I feel like I’m being followed. Everywhere I go, it’s like people are looking at me.”

Steve tells her to go home and try to relax, knowing that the project is clean and any agency should be able to see that as quickly as he did. After she leaves, he paces the halls of the old apartment building he has been staying in. If it is SHIELD asking questions, he would rather not be seen. If it is anyone else, he definitely does not need them to know that he is there. If they do not already. Either way, they must have made the connections and are looking for the next targets just like him. This is more dangerous for Bucky. Steve reminds himself that he knows Bucky better than anyone and cannot find him. At least, he used to know him. The truth is that Steve has no idea what is going on in Bucky’s head. And he does not have a fraction of the resources that SHIELD has.

As his mind is being scattered with these realizations, he notices something hanging on a door at the end of the hall. Steve choose this building because it is mostly empty, with only a few poor local residents. Something about the door catches his interest, and he gets closer to find that there is a scrap of paper taped to the surface near the doorknob. It is a child’s drawing of a stick figure surrounded by squares of different colors and shapes. Fruit, Steve realizes, seeing the orange, red, and purple circles encased in brown crates. The drawing is all black, with boxy clothing and long hair, except for an arm colored over with gray crayon. Steve stops breathing. It is impossible, he thinks, or at least extremely unlikely. He listens for a moment, but the hallway is devoid of sound. Carefully, he twists the doorknob and slides the door open.

The one room apartment is as bare and dirty as his own downstairs. It is also empty. He steps into the room without a sound, closing the door behind him as he takes it in. There is an unmade mattress on one side and a small metal table by the other wall that serves as a kitchen. A few mismatch items sit on top of the refrigerator, a radio on top of one of the peeling yellow cabinets. Steve approaches the table and finds two overripe plums and a black moleskin notebook. He flips through it, but every page is blank. There is a cup of herbal tea gone cold, filling the space with a musty smell. There is nothing in particular that identifies the apartment as Bucky’s, but Steve runs his hand along the pane of the open back window and is sure of it. Bucky was here, but he won’t be again.

Steve goes to a café after leaving the apartment filled with uncertainty. After so long having no idea where Bucky was, after desperately following him across a continent, something about standing in that abandoned apartment felt final. He tries to clear his head and decide where to go next. He has not heard word of anything, no strange science nor crime activity. Hands loosely gripping an untouched coffee, he flips through the file in his head, trying to find anything to go on. His coffee has grown cold by the time he realizes that there is nowhere to go. He has to resign to the futility of his search and go home. Before he can begin to think about what he will do back in New York, Steve notices a familiar face sitting on the other side of the outdoor eating area.

Despite the relatively short time that has passed, Morita looks older. His face has more lines than when they met, though it is covered partially by the brim of a hat. He is in plain clothes, facing the street and holding a paper that his eyes frequently abandon. Steve does not think for a second that he is just on vacation. He considers leaving and probably would have if it had been any other agent, but Steve didn’t even know that Morita had been recruited. He could have sworn he had retired after the war.

He walks towards the table and is a few feet away when Morita’s brown eyes flick up to his face. The surprise registers as he sets down the paper. Steve sits at the table.

“Hi, Cap,” he says, looking mildly unsettled.

“It’s been a while, Jim. I didn’t realize that Peggy had roped you into all this.”

“She tried to recruit me back when you were just starting up, but I said no. When she asked me to help out while they were short staffed, as a personal favor, well...Anna’s expecting, so we could use the money.”

“Congratulations,” Steve says earnestly.

He wishes he could be having a normal conversation with his friend, reminiscing and talking about the future. Jim gives one of his real smiles, and Steve knows that he can’t wait to get home.

“I shouldn’t be surprised that she brought you in for this,” Steve says. Morita looks at him questioningly. “You’re looking for him, aren’t you?”

“The Winter Soldier?” Morita says in a low voice.

“You don’t know who he is?”

“What am I missing?”

“It’s Bucky, Jim. He’s the Soldier.”

“You’re telling me I’m out here trying to get the drop on Sarge? Does Carter know?”

“Who do you think told me?”

Morita shakes his head and looks up at the sky for a moment. He lets out a sigh.

“I don’t want him to be doing this, but I have my orders. I was going to call and tell them that I’m going home next week anyway. This whole thing has felt like a wild goose chase. But I can’t stop what they’re gonna do.”

“It’s fine,” Steve says. “They are never going to find him as long as he doesn’t want to be found.” He does not mention that Bucky was here and fled. He stands from the table.

“It really was good to see you, Cap.”

“Maybe I can come meet Anna and the baby one day,” Steve says with a smile that Morita returns.

“I’d like that. And I’ll probably leave this little meeting out of my report when I get back. No reason to tell the higher ups about a run in with an old friend.”

“Thanks, Jim.”

***

The return to a normal routine is easier than Steve expects. Within a month he has settled into his old groove of a slow life. He unpacks his bag and puts it away. He wakes up early, and the nightmares come less frequently than they did in Europe. Things are different now, though. A grief haunts his days now that he knows that there are things he will never be able to return to. Parts of himself have disappeared, hiding in cities all across the world. A version of him sits at the bottom of the ocean beneath the ice.

Steve wakes one morning and eats his breakfast in a contented silence, surveying the apartment before him, the first place that has ever been his and his alone. Without any prompting, Steve sets his dishes in the sink and goes to the bedroom. At the top of the closet sits a green box containing a few old files and a stack of envelopes. Steve brings the letters to the bed and reads them one at a time.

***

Steve can only fill so much of his time with the things that make him happy. As much as he does not like to admit it, he misses the feeling of being in the field. The tenseness of it, the physicality He walks down to the docks one day and inquires about a job. The foreman eyes him but agrees because there is always work to be done. It’s nice, in a way. Steve can do the work of four others in a day, and he gets to shut off his brain for a few hours. He comes home one day with the smell of the bay still in his nose and unlocks to the door to find a small envelope has been slipped underneath.

The telegram is unmarked except for his name and address. There is no company insignia that he recognizes. Steve unfolds it carefully.

 

NEED TO TALK. NEWARK. SHIPMAN & COURT. THURS 2.

PEGGY

 

Steve arrives early at the restaurant and watches the room. The other patrons are oblivious, busy with themselves. None of them spare a glance in his direction, but they aren’t avoiding looking at him either. No one else is alone nor moving too casually. Steve does one more cursory sweep before relaxing a little. There isn’t technically reason for SHIELD or any other agency to take him in, but he doesn’t doubt their ability to invent one. Looking for an enemy of the state overseas could warrant his detainment, and they wouldn’t be able to outrun him anyways. Steve shakes his head and sets the coffee down. This is Peggy, afterall. They might not see eye to eye anymore, but she must still have a moral code. This meeting shouldn’t make him so nervous. Just as he thinks so, she appears beside the table.

“Hello, Steve.” Her voice betrays nothing save perhaps a bit of sadness, but Steve cannot be sure anymore.

She takes the seat across from him, smoothes the lines from her gray skirt, and folds her hands on the table. Her face is harder than it used to be, but only slightly. She still looks warm with hair in loose rolled curls around her face. Something feels drastically different, and Steve realizes that her lips are painted an unfamiliar mauve color.

“I was surprised to receive your message.” The words feel too formal even as Steve says them.

“I’m sorry about the way we left things. I’ve regretted it.” She watches him carefully and continues as he tries to maintain a blank face. “When this all started, I wanted to make something good come from the war. Where I could really do something again, with people like you. But I let it get away from me. I overvalued Howard’s work, gave him too much power, let some of my own go. I won’t blame him or anyone. This was my work. I’m taking responsibility for the ways that SHIELD has changed. I don’t want this to be my legacy, Steve.”

“Then don’t let it be,” he says, more forcefully than he means to. Peggy frowns.

“I don’t have enough control over it, any of it.”

“Do you remember the day we met?” Steve asks. “I stood in line that day scared out of my mind because nobody wanted me there and watched some pompous private try to discredit your position. So you walked right over and punched him in the jaw.”

Steve grins, his first real smile since he can’t remember when. Something shifts in Peggy’s face, and she looks at him the way she used to. She shakes her head with a smile. Before long, they have ordered lunch and are talking about the whole mess as if nothing is different.

“The truth is that I don’t want to be director anymore. I need to take a step back and observe the whole thing while someone else can get wrapped up in that role.”

“You need balance,” Steve says, nodding. SHIELD could benefit from having Peggy oversee it from above rather than within.

“The problem,” Peggy says,” is that everyone I trust is out of the game. If I want to overhaul the entire agency, I need someone fresh who hasn’t been involved with this version of it.”

The comment sticks with Steve when he goes home that night and all the next day until he finally calls Peggy. She arrives exactly on time that afternoon with an air of authority and interest and follows him into the living room.

“Peggy, this is Nick,” Steve says as they enter the room.

“Colonel Nicholas J. Fury,” Nick says as he stands from his position on the couch and steps forward to shake Peggy’s hand.

“I’m curious what Captain Rogers has told you about this meeting, Colonel.”

“Just that you run an important organization whose name I wouldn’t recognize. And that you might have a job opening.”

***

“I can see why you suggested him,” Peggy says after the meeting is finished and Nick has left. “He reminds me of you and of…”

Steve smiles wistfully and replies, “I hope that you’ll consider him for Director. I think you would work well together now that you’ve forced Howard out.”

“He has a budding weapons empire to run,” Peggy says seriously. “He will be fine without SHIELD as a pet project.”

Steve sits at the small table in his kitchen, and Peggy follows. It’s wonderful to have her here, to talk to her again. They had always understood each other. From the beginning, Steve had known that they were cut from the same cloth. She had always reminded him of a calmer Bucky. Steve distances himself from the thought, not ready to let any sadness penetrate his mood.

“Steve, I have to tell you something,” Peggy says, as if reading his mind. He waits for her to go on. “As I’ve been restructuring SHIELD, there have been extraneous budget items, missions that aren’t necessary or are misguided. I’ve killed a lot of them, especially dead cases. I want you to know that after I closed the Winter Soldier file, it was misplaced, so it’s disappeared from SHIELD records.”

Steve processes this information for a moment, but before he can say anything, she continues.

“The truth is that we would have no way to prosecute any suspects given that all of the assassinations were foreign and not directly linked to SHIELD interests. And because they’ve stopped.”

“What?”

“There hasn’t been any activities that we could link to the pattern in over a year. If you want to bring him home, nothing would happen.”

“Pegs, I don’t even know where he is. He doesn’t want to come home.”

Peggy doesn’t respond because there really isn’t anything more to say. But she sits with him, and they both think about how far they have come and what they have lost.

“You know,” Steve says as the afternoon sun begins to set, “he always said that the war would kill me. Turns out he was right.”


	5. Chapter 5

Bucky wakes up covered in sweat, sheets tangled around him. The darkness of the room dissipates as his breathing slows. It was the snow again tonight, endless and suffocating. Bucky doesn’t bother writing it down. The nightmare comes so often, but he is almost grateful; it is better than when he falls asleep and feels himself strapped down on that table again, a scalpel slicing into the soles of his feet. He stretches his left arm out towards the edge of the mattress, opening and closing his hand a few times. It still feels foreign on occasion, too artificial, too cold. But most of the time existing feels foreign too, so he rolls his shoulder and gets out of bed.

The farmhouse he has occupied seems to have been abandoned after a tree fell into the back half of the kitchen. Bucky does not mind the damage. It has more furnishings than the apartment he left back in Vienna. He was walking by the window one morning when something caught his eye on the street below; a flash of sunlight on blonde hair. He stood at the window for a solid minute as if asking to be seen, watching Steve cross the street and enter the building. A million things had rushed through Bucky’s mind. The first few were too complicated to unravel on the spot. The thought that the best way to catch an enhanced soldier was with another was more simple. Mostly, all Bucky had felt was afraid. He jumped back from the window and glanced around the apartment. He accumulated little as always. He grabbed his coat off the back of the chair and his almost full notebook off the table, cramming it into the already packed backpack near the bed. Without another thought, he had opened the back window and jumped onto the neighboring roof.

Thinking about it now, Bucky is only marginally less confused. He changes his clothes and grabs the quilt off the bed, taking it downstairs with him. The farmhouse is small but not the smallest place he has stayed. It’s much larger than the apartment he left in Brooklyn. And it is isolated, which Bucky prefers. 

It feels good to be back in Romania. There is something about this place that makes him content. As he steps off the stairs into the living room, he notices the bright red prayer beads hanging off of a broken table. He grabs the beads, which he found in a street market a while back. He bought them because they reminded him of Sarah. He holds them now and can almost see her standing in that old kitchen, worrying the beads of her rosary between her fingers. Then he sees a young Steve lying in bed, constantly coughing. 

The memory shifts, and they are older. Steve lies on a mattress shaking violently as snow falls outside. Bucky layers blanket after blanket on the bed, quelling some of the shivering. His own skin covered in goosebumps, Bucky slips off his work boots and crawls under the blankets. He puts his arms around Steve, trying to give him as much body heat as possible. Steve turns in towards Bucky’s chest.

The sensation feels so real that Bucky can feel a January draft in his hair, Steve’s warm breath on his skin. It is alarming, even though this is far from the first memory to reveal itself. Bucky finds his notebook and describes the scene in black ink, trying to place it. This moment is easier than some. At first, the only memories to come back were ones he did not want. The table, the chair, the war. But then it wasn’t just shooting and blood and the bone-deep cold of the trenches, it was Steve smiling in that ridiculous uniform, covered in mud. Steve dragging him into a treeline, leaning over a map talking to Agent Carter, sitting beside him in a pub full of shattered glass. Bucky was in Romania the first time when he dreamt about the table, Zola’s voice echoing in his head. When he woke up, though, the first thing he saw was Steve standing over him in the darkness, face painted with relief, blonde hair peeking out of his helmet like a halo. The last face Bucky expected to see. He thought it was a trick at first, a new way to torture him.

The details are written on one of the first pages of a cheap notebook, now tucked away in his pack. Bucky is almost finished with his third now, and the memories become more solid each day for the most part. On bad days, when he wakes up confused and enraged or completely apathetic, Bucky rereads the journals. Sometimes a certain memory will feel more real than the others, and he holds onto it like an anchor. A lime C-Ration hard candy. Steve, small and bloody-lipped in an alley. Cigarette smoke. A half remembered poem. The blade of a knife in his thigh. Steve shouting for him from the kitchen.

It is always Steve circulating his memories. It wasn’t until the image of his blue eyes illuminated by firelight, tired and looking happily at him, that Bucky realized. They came quickly after that. The feeling of Steve’s hands, as familiar as the stock of a rifle. The way morning light fell on his face when he slept. His stubbornness and how biting his anger could be. A familiar panic that rose in Bucky’s chest picturing him in a fight. Sitting in a dust-covered farmhouse half a world away, Bucky understands, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

He starts to boil some water and thinks about his options. The lead in Austria had been a bust; he had realized that before spotting Steve. The problem is that there aren’t anymore to follow. He cannot think of another person to track down or project to investigate. Could it be possible that the threat has been completely taken care of? That Hydra and all its influences really are dead? Bucky sips his tea filled with uncertainty.

He looks at the arm, really looks at it, and decides that it can be over. It has to be. He is ready to sort through the notes and memories, to welcome the new nightmares they give life to. This place isn’t home, nowhere really is, but it will do for a while. Bucky takes a drink and readies himself for a new sort of fight.


	6. Chapter 6

The moment Steve opens the front door, something feels wrong. He stands holding it half open, listening in the dark, but the apartment is silent. Stepping inside, he reaches for the gun the small table by the door and makes his way through the shadows past the kitchen. Nothing is out of place. There is no particular reason for Steve to be tense, but the hair on the back of his neck stands up nonetheless. He treads noiselessly into the living room, immediately raising his gun at the figure standing inside. Steve flips on the light, and the breath is stolen out of his lungs. He wavers, lowers the weapon, takes a single step forward.

Bucky stands still in the center of the room, moonlight from the open window glinting on his left arm. His long, unwashed hair shields most of his face, but those blue eyes are clear as they track Steve’s every movement. Steve is silent for a stunned moment, and Bucky watches him, expressionless.

“You’re here.” Steve finally says. Bucky’s forehead wrinkles, the rest of his face remaining the same. 

“I wanted to come home.” His voice is gravel. It fills the room, swallows Steve whole.

Steve’s mind is foggy, and he can’t process the words being said, the man standing in front of him. He sits on the edge of the couch, the years weighing down on him. Bucky watches him from his place in the center of the room, gripping his fingers into loose fists as they twitch against his legs. Steve closes his eyes.

“I needed to be somewhere else. To sort out everything in my head.” Steve looks up, and Bucky continues in a hesitant tone. “I was in Europe, but you know that. Started in Romania and stayed there for a while. Then to the mountains, where it happened.” His voice twists. “That was a mistake. Then to Italy after that, which was better...and worse.”

“And now you come back?” Steve asks.

Bucky shifts his weight, and it is the first noise his body makes in the room. He takes a few steps forward as if to fill the silence with movement while he finds what he wants to say.

“Your mom’s name was Sarah. You used to wear newspapers in your shoes.”

Every word drives into Steve’s chest. He stands up and stays, not knowing how to respond.

“They’ve been coming back for a while now,” Bucky continues. “I write everything down to try to make sense of it, but there’s no order. Mostly it’s just images that I can’t even date. The bad stuff came first, then the war, then other times. The only constant,” he looks at Steve, “is you.”

“Me,” Steve repeats evenly, not a whisper nor a question, but something to say.

“I couldn’t figure out why. But then I remembered the way you used to look at me. And the letters I wrote you. And those nights after I came home from the dancehalls.”

“Buck—”

“Why didn’t you tell me when we left the hospital? Why didn’t you tell me what we were to each other?”

Steve’s chest twists as a weight settles in, cold as ice.

“You weren’t you,” he says in a quiet voice. Bucky waits, so he continues. “You couldn’t even remember my name, and I didn’t know how you would react. I was afraid. I didn’t want to lose you again.”

Steve glances down at his shoes on the hardwood floor. A confession after all this time, to the one person who had always known all of his sins.

“Guess it didn’t matter since I lost you anyways,” he adds after a moment, looking up. Bucky digests everything he says with a face that could best any poker player. Then he walks carefully towards Steve.

“I just want to try…” he murmurs, stepping forward until he is close enough that Steve can feel the warmth of his breath. Slowly, Bucky raises his right hand to touch Steve’s cheek, thumb brushing against the stubble, the edge of his hand hitting Steve’s jaw. Steve closes his eyes. Equally slowly, Bucky does the same with his left hand, the black glove smooth against Steve’s skin. He reaches his own hand up to cover it, the coolness of the metal permeating through the fabric. Their foreheads touch, and Steve opens his eyes to find Bucky breathing consciously, eyes out of focus. Then he leans into a kiss.

For a second, Steve allows himself to just breathe it all in. The warmth of Bucky’s body, the hesitant lightness of his hands on Steve’s face, the familiar feeling of holding his neck, fingers spreading up into his hairline, the taste of his lips, different than before. The cigarettes are gone, replaced by something brighter.

When it is over, they stand together for a moment in silence, both letting out a long breath as they look at each other. Then Bucky steps away, awkwardly, the motion reminding Steve that this isn’t the drafty apartment he wants it to be and they aren’t the kids they were. Bucky steps back to sit on a faded emerald chair, and Steve returns to his place on the couch. They sit without saying anything, Steve isn’t sure for how long.

“When was the first time that we did that?” Bucky asks.

Steve has to think for a second before replying, “I don’t actually remember,” with a laugh. The corner of Bucky’s mouth creeps up with the irony. “We were fourteen, I think, when it started. Nineteen when you moved in after Ma died. Everything between that was confusing, but you were always what I pictured when people talked about love.”

Bucky nods, retreating for a moment to integrate this information into what he knows. He worries his hands together.

“I want to come home.”

“Then stay,” Steve says, voice firm.

“I’m not whole.” The words rush out of Bucky’s mouth like an admission. “I don’t sleep. There are days I can barely remember my own name.”

“I have nightmares too,” Steve says. “Of the war, the ice...of losing you. And I’ll remind you when you don’t remember. Whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you. The whole story.”

“I’m not the person I was before.”

“Neither am I.”

They sit that way, facing each other in a living room that doesn’t yet feel like home to either. The sun rises, throwing beams of gold and purple and maroon light through the window and across the floor. Steve rises from the couch.

“Come on,” he says, starting into the kitchen. Without a word, Bucky follows. Steve puts the kettle on, and as the tea steeps, they start talking.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!
> 
> [Buy me a coffee if you enjoyed it?](https://ko-fi.com/L4L4WBXK#)
> 
> xoxo


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